Manfred Kets de Vries

Manfred Kets de Vries is a Distinguished Clinical Professor at INSEAD and pioneering leadership consultant who uniquely integrates management theory with psychoanalysis to decode executive behaviour. Founder of INSEAD's Global Leadership Centre and author of over 50 books, including his forthcoming *Being a CEO Whisperer: Meditations on Leaders, Life and Change*, he has received the International Leadership Association's Lifetime Achievement Award and is recognised globally as one of the founding professionals in leadership development. Through his work with senior executives and his acclaimed programmes, Manfred equips leaders to recognise destructive patterns, harness constructive traits, and build high-performing teams that drive measurable engagement and organisational health.

When Manfred Kets de Vries co-authored *The Neurotic Organisation* in 1984 with Danny Miller, he opened a door between two worlds that had rarely met: the boardroom and the therapist's couch. That groundbreaking exploration of how personality shapes leadership, corporate culture, and strategy established a new lens through which to understand executive behaviour. Over four decades later, with more than 50 books published and his forthcoming *Being a CEO Whisperer: Meditations on Leaders, Life and Change* in preparation, Manfred has built an unmatched body of work that decodes the psychological forces driving organisational success and failure. His pioneering integration of management theory with psychoanalysis has earned him recognition as one of the founding professionals in leadership development as a field, including the International Leadership Association's Lifetime Achievement Award, making him the first non-U.S. recipient of this honour.

As Distinguished Clinical Professor of Leadership Development and Organisational Change at INSEAD, Manfred founded the institution's Global Leadership Centre and serves as programme director of *The Challenge of Leadership: Creating Reflective Leaders*, alongside his role as Scientific Director of the Executive Master's Programme *Consulting and Coaching for Change*. His academic contributions extend across Harvard Business School, McGill University, and the European School for Management and Technology in Berlin, whilst his scholarly output includes over 400 academic papers and approximately 100 case studies, seven of which received Best Case of the Year awards. Five-time recipient of INSEAD's distinguished teacher award, he has been elected Fellow of the Academy of Management and honoured as a lifetime member of the International Society for the Psychoanalytic Study of Organizations, which he helped establish. His research and commentary regularly feature in *The Financial Times*, *The Economist*, *The New York Times*, and *Harvard Business Review*, cementing his position among the world's most influential management thinkers.

Manfred's work addresses a critical challenge facing organisations today: the measurable cost of disengaged leadership. With Gallup research attributing roughly 70 per cent of variance in team engagement to leaders, and global disengagement costing an estimated $10 trillion in lost productivity, his expertise offers practical solutions rooted in psychological insight. Through his concept of constructive narcissism, he helps senior executives recognise when necessary confidence crosses into damaging excess, equipping them with strategies to build high-performance teams and foster organisational health. Audiences leave his sessions with actionable frameworks for transforming destructive patterns into productive leadership behaviours, creating lasting impact on team dynamics, employee engagement, and measurable business outcomes. Whether addressing organisational transformation, cross-cultural leadership styles, or the psychodynamics of executive transitions, Manfred delivers insights that interrupt harmful cycles and enable leaders to see themselves, and their organisations, with uncommon clarity.